


Rewind

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst, Family Loss, Gen, Surprise Ending, messages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8585266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Chapter One: When the crew is lost in the Silent World, the Nordic Council sends out messengers to notify their next of kin.Chapter Two: The memorial and its aftermath.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's catharsis-by-angsty-fic time, because that worked _so well_ last I tried it. But I won't leave you hanging; there'll be a second chapter to make up for this one. Edit: Chapter two has now been posted. 
> 
> Many thanks to Kiraly for the beta of both chapters, the enabling, and for the idea that came up when we were discussing the new chapter and how it might go. The story shaped up to look quite different than I expected, but that's hardly her fault.

It never got any easier. 

Jörmundur Ósvaldsson hated his job. 

He hated the fine paper of the black-edged envelopes that crumpled so eagerly under his fingers, and he hated the feeling of the folded flag's fabric on his open palms. He hated the grit of sand under his boots as he walked the winding path from the coach station to the Ragnarsson farm off the road. 

He hadn't taken this particular path before, but there'd been plenty just like it.

He hated the bleating of sheep that greeted him from the stable, and the light that spilled out into the dim of the winter afternoon from the open gate. 

He hated the clatter of the feed-bucket that came crashing down, because that was when he knew he'd been spotted. 

He hated the lines he'd rehearsed to perfection on the coach ride, and that he recited them to himself just to be sure, one more time, under his breath. 

"In the name and on behalf of the Nordic Council, my condolences. Your son, Reynir Þór Árnason, has been reported as lost in the Silent World during the Nordic Council's research and rediscovery expedition to Denmark." 

Jörmundur Ósvaldsson took a deep breath and walked up to the blonde woman standing by the stable door like a pillar of ice. 

* * *

It was hard to flip the off switch on a radio aggressively, but sometimes it wasn't. 

" _Perkele!_ I told him he shouldn't let them go! So now he's not only gone to Sweden and indefinitely on leave, now he'll be a case for the nuthouse and we're short two mages, a scout, a skald and a mechanic in one fell swoop. That's just bloody - _vittu!_ Perfect! Just great! _Well done_ , Onni Hotakainen!" 

The ear-phones clattered to the table when Lemmikki Paavola yanked them off. The radio room was sparse and empty. No one had been by all day to make a call, and no one answered her tirade. Just her luck that she'd drawn that particular shift for a call from Iceland to come in. 

Lemmikki slammed the door to her office shut and marched outside, tipping her head back against the sky. There weren't any stars yet, it just hung dull and greying toward darkness overhead. 

"Aaaaaaaaaaargh!" 

At least she wouldn't have to give the story - or the official confirmation of what Onni must have known already - to him in person, the flags and bullshit honors. She'd un-jam the line to Sweden, drop the message with the idiots who had roped Onni into that harebrained scheme, and let them explain. Served them right. As far as Onni was concerned, she was at least a person he hadn't hated wholly and completely, and she might decide to try and find him in the dreamworld later. If Onni even let her in, it would be for some mutual comfort over Tuuri - sweet, bubbly, devious Tuuri, who'd definitely been a friend. She'd barely known Lalli; a communications mage officer didn't have much to say to a scout mage who talked less than your average piece of rock, but Onni would take his loss just as hard.

It was a good thing she didn't do sadness. 

* * *

Älvdalen Detention Center chief Saida Muhamed Löfgren disliked how her voice crackled through the speaker by her office door. "Send them in now." She disliked the sound of the feedback, too, making her sound tinny and unlike herself in a way that never failed to make her hair stand on end. As she pressed a button for the bolt to slide clear, her free hand ran down her dress uniform; fiddling with ribbons and adjusting a button before clasping her hands behind her back and pulling herself straight. 

She'd even met the boy. A round kid who didn't reach his mother's shoulder then. He'd inherited her droopy eyes and the downturned corners of his mouth, Saida remembered, and thought that if he kept on growing he might just make it to Helga Västerström's own height. He'd pilfered a piece of chocolate from the bowl on her desk during that appointment, and she'd grinned and turned a blind eye as they discussed the questions of guardianship and family feuds between the Västerström brothers.

She owed his parents to at least have the facts in her mind. No ill will to the dead, even if she couldn't for the life of her imagine how the boy had grown up to be a Cleanser on official Council mission. And she knew that it didn't take a bad Cleanser to die out there, the good ones were just as flesh-and-blood, and Denmark must be a whole other caliber. 

_Emil Västerström, missing in action and likely dead. Last known location: Odense University Hospital, after recovering medical intel about a possible cure of the Rash Illness and coming under attack by a significant number of trolls. All attempts at contact by radio and by mage have been futile, and their vehicle was found abandoned by a reconnaissance crew with no signs that any team member escaped alive._

His poor mother. 

"Please sit," she said and gestured to the chairs before her desk when the Västerströms shuffled into her office with linked hands. Heading a prison was ugliness sometimes, but never with these two, and the guard stayed behind at the door. They were like shadows of themselves, quiet and unremarkable while their prison years ticked down. Helga Västerström, who'd been both scientist and socialite in her past life, ran the prison library, and still received regular letters from her former colleagues and especially her sister-in-law on the work they did so she could pick back up when their embezzlement charges were atoned for. 

"Would you like coffee?" Saida asked. "I can have my assistant bring some in." 

"No, thank you," said Torolf, and Helga shook her head. "We would rather have the bad news." 

Saida told them, and quietly watched the air drain out of them. 

* * * 

"No! No. You don't get to break his nose, Asbjørn! Pull yourself together; you're a General, not a berserker! If you want us in trouble with the Nordic Council, save it for that Torbjörn fellow when we meet him. I'll help." 

Thank the gods for the common sense of Solveig Eide. 

For a moment Alfinn Sivertsen had thought he'd breathed his last, and the hulking - man, he supposed he had to call the male General Eide - regarded him with murder written plain across his face. And by then the entire Mead Hall had perked up to the scene on the Generals' dais, and he was becoming uncomfortably aware of the weight of a hundred Viking stares directed at him. Why, just why had the Nordic Council picked him to deliver this particular message? 

He knew why, of course. If anyone but a diplomat showed up to deliver the tidings, the Forsvaret Ting would be after them like lightning for enough breaches of protocol to need both hands to count. So he'd taken a boat from Aurland and struck out into the wilds - Dalsnes had a… reputation. And he'd neither known nor cared about the redhead who'd radiated confidence at him from the photo ID he'd been shown. But he couldn't shake the feeling that being sent there was some kind of nebulous punishment for a transgression he wasn't even aware of. 

Uncomfortable silence settled onto the hall. The Vikings still stared.

Solveig Eide was moving with sharp restraint and carefully measured gestures that left no doubt of the fury roiling underneath. Her knuckles were white as she grasped a bottle of mead from the table and poured three goblets; her jaw was tight. She handed one goblet to Alfinn, one to her husband, and took the third one herself, stepping to the edge of the dais then to address the crowd at their tables below. 

"Drink up - for Sigrun!" 

This time, the silence only took a moment as people scrambled for goblets and bottles of their own, rose to their feet, and the shout was repeated like a roar of thunder that shook the rafters and made him wonder if he'd misjudged the dead woman's picture. 

"For Sigrun!" 

* * *

"Careful with the marmalade ones. They might be poisoned," Mille Madsen said through a mouthful of cookie crumbs and reached for another cookie out of the blue tin that stood open on the table. "And only I know which ones aren't." Her eyes were sharp and squinted suspiciously. "Why're you here? I mean, why're you here _now_? Maja was going to be at the clinic until late and if you're loud again I'll bang on your wall all night so you won't get any sleep even after you're done." 

Elsebeth Holst took her time to answer, reached for a cookie, and let the buttery flavour fill her mouth. Any other day she might have paid Mille back in kind, perhaps by pretending to choke and die, but that wasn't… appropriate, at all, considering what she'd come to tell them. Just because she was a part of the family didn't mean that official business didn't intrude sometimes. 

This one would be rough, but the Nordic Council hadn't particularly cared about her arguments against it; she was an operative and had to bow to her superiors unless she wanted trouble. 'Break it to them gently, then, both the death and the funerary celebrations', had been her only direction. 

And for some reason she suspected Mille already knew. The girl - an insufferably bratty teenager now - had been a five-year-old demon the last time she'd come into the house with a Dannebrog to present the family with, but it was impossible to escape the family history. That now hung framed in a prominent spot opposite the table, and a black-framed photograph of Michael Madsen was tucked into a corner. 

It'd be joined by a twin flag - and a twin portrait - very soon. 

"Official business," she said over the bile churning in her stomach. "I'll have to speak to your parents when they're done with the milking."

Mille pulled a face. "Did Mikkel get fired again?" 

Elsebeth almost snorted, before she stifled the impulse and took a sip of the tea she'd made herself before sitting down to wait for Morten and Freja. "Like I said, official business. We'll be telling you all later, but I can tell you that it is not…" she shrugged. "It is not the news you are expecting and it is not good news. It is very bad news. Only - well, you wanted to see Silent Denmark, didn't you? You'll see that if your parents let you attend."

It was harebrained, of course. While Copenhagen hadn't been the site of the team's deaths, everyone was still rattled by the Great Defeat of Kastrup a decade ago. To stage the funeral celebration there, even if it was just across the newly-reinforced Öresund bridge on the other side of the tunnel gates, she thought it was just as likely to get the rest of the families eradicated, but that wasn't her choice to make. 

Mille perked up, even if her suspicion had deepened, and stuffed another cookie in her mouth that made her answer impossible to understand. 

"What?" Elsebeth asked. 

"She said 'patronizing doesn't suit you'," said a voice behind her, and Elsebeth almost jumped. The family resemblance between the Madsen men was uncanny, and Malthe Madsen sounded just like Mikkel and Michael had twenty years ago when they'd chased each other through the pasture behind the house, and whoever stepped into cow dung first lost the game. 

"And you are being a brat; come here. You can wait with us until your parents come in." When he stuck out his tongue and ducked back out of the living room, Elsebeth didn't bother to go after him. Patronizing didn't suit her, but she knew the boy especially would cling to her like a burr come evening. 

They were, all of them, too clever by half. She hoped it wouldn't land them, too, into an early grave.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes Jörmundur Ósvaldsson did not hate his job. 

He had a mug of tea by his hand that filled his office with the scent of oranges and cinnamon, an indulgence that his salary limited to celebratory occasions. This was a good deal better than delivering bad news. 

His leaned back in his chair and pulled the small phone into his lap to dial the Coast Guard's Office of Health and Quarantine. Sleet hammered against the windows, but he had a full two hours before leaving for home, and in the wet and the dusk not even the most tenacious members of the press would still be hanging around on the slippery cobblestones before the Nordic Council's main office. 

"Yes," he said when the line crackled and his colleague's voice rang through. In Ingdís Lárusdóttir the Nordic Council had sought and found a scapegoat for the Silent World expedition to mitigate the blame on the institution as a whole, and now that she had something to atone for - however factual her guilt was for the quarantine ship arrangements she had supposedly failed - she was easily persuaded. 

"Yes. The V/S Þór has docking permission at Öresund Base to bring their families home? It's settled? _Thank you_."

He hung up. The chair creaked under his weight as he settled further against it. Outside, the streetlights kindled suddenly, adding a wash of brightness from the wet streets into his office. All was going to go according to plan. They should be done with the memorial service already, waiting in Öresund Base's quarantine facilities until the ship picked them up for their homeward journeys, first to Bornholm, then Björköfjärden and Pori, then the return via Dalsnes and finally Reykjavík. 

No further casualties. No further problems. 

Jörmundur Ósvaldsson reached for his tea and let the flavour wash through his mouth. 

His phone rang.

* * *

Lemmikki Paavola winged across the dream-sea in search of Onni. She'd found his Haven empty the past few nights, and all she could assume was him lying awake, or that he took refuge in ordinary sleep when even the crossing to Mora and then to Denmark didn't deter her from following him in dreams as he travelled to the memorial. It did begin to feel as though he was avoiding her, although nothing about it surprised her. In his own way, Onni was as antisocial as Lalli had been, and the situation, she had to admit, was unusual. Not unusual enough to not cry her frustrations into the starry heavens above the dream-sea, but then that was a tried-and-true coping method, no matter which shape she wore.

After she'd brought the news and he'd broken down and cried until even his dreamworld self had no more tears left, Onni had fallen asleep on her shoulder even there. He'd looked like death when he woke up again and still found her with him, and she'd let things happen even knowing she'd regret them later - or would, if she did regret any more than she did sadness. It hadn't been reminiscence so much as some very necessary reassurance that he still lived. Onni, she learned, had been part of the battle, but he'd been incapacitated before it was over, with his Luonto not only hurt but nearly spent under the onslaught. Once he'd recovered enough to rejoin, he'd found only a deserted battlefield. Lemmikki's visit to relate the Nordic Council's conclusion and extend the invitation to the funeral had done the rest to break him. 

Now her loon's wings beat against the borders of his area, and she could see her reflection slip by, distorted on the glassy barrier. There was no getting in, but when she landed and her claws scrabbled for purchase atop the dome, something was different. Onni's area thrummed with energy as though there were a current running through it. She pecked her bill against the barrier, and fluttered down when it suddenly gave way beneath her. 

Onni was sitting dangling his feet into the water from the rock ledge, a world of difference from the hunched-up figure she'd found a few nights ago, and and even while she circled lower she could see his eyes were, for the first time since the loss of his sister and his cousin, clear.

* * * 

Saida Muhamed Löfgren turned the medal over in her fingers. The cool gold was warming where her fingertips touched, and the blue-and-yellow ribbon embroidered with a golden sword trailed over the table before her. Helga and Torolf Västerström were watching with an expression of solid, if contented, disbelief. _För Förtjänstfulla Insatser i den Tysta Världen_ , the medal said. _For Meritorious Services in the Silent World_. They'd brought that back, along with his salary and a hefty reward for Emil's bravery that they had decided to put to good use. 

"I take it the arrangements are to your satisfaction? Of course there is the paperwork that still needs filing, and I have not yet had a response from the court, but I see no reason why they ought to withhold approval. I want you to confirm that I should go ahead with the money transfer," Saida said, and Helga nodded too quickly for her to even fully finish her sentence. Saida nudged the tray of coffee cups and cinnamon pastries across her desk toward them. It was about time to fika, and more than that, both of them looked shaken to the core even after the long journey home that should have given them time to process the new reality. 

Torolf murmured his gratitude, but when he reached for a cup, it trembled so badly in his hand that half the coffee sloshed into the saucer and he set it down again, putting his coffee-stained fingers over his face, trying to breathe. Helga gave her husband a look of concern, then hunched in and wrapped her arms around herself. "You see, my husband still cannot believe…" she gave a short laugh. "Neither can I, to be quite honest." 

"Tell me the details, then," Saida Muhamed Löfgren said. "What I heard so far - it beggars belief. And your son was very brave. You must be proud." She turned the medal over in her fingers again, glancing at the name. _Emil Fredrik Västerström_. "Go on." She gestured at the pastries, which she knew both of them liked. "Leave out nothing; I want this story to remember you by after you've gone home."

Torolf cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and closed it again. Helga breathed out another of her shaky laughs, and began to talk. 

* * * 

Alfinn Sivertsen concluded, his bottle of mead only still half-full before him, that Asbjørn Eide was as much of a man as any man could hope to be. 

But then, he thought he was on his way to being very drunk. Up-to-his-eyeballs-drunk. 

And his eyeballs stung. The mead, and the heavy pinewood smoke from the fires that hung in the mead hall like a swath of mist, the talk and the song at some table in the back, not to mention the stifling heat. He fingered the clasp of the cloak that Asbjørn had thrown over his shoulders and declared him a honorary General of Dalsnes with, but his fingers kept slipping. It was a finicky Viking-style design rather than the buttons of his Bunad vest, and he was drunk. 

And then his cup was topped up again and soaked his fingers when he drank. 

The hall bellowed out another toast to Sigrun Eide for one of her Silent World heroic feats, as they'd been doing all night, and Alfinn let the mood sweep him along. More honey cloyed his tongue, but he drained his cup and slammed it down on the table. "For Sigrun!!"

It felt like he'd known her forever when he hadn't actually known her at all, but that was the _other_ reputation Dalsnes had that he hadn't known about before they'd invited him for a true feast in Sigrun's honour after the Generals' return from Denmark: Hospitality and drinking binges you wouldn't forget in your life. 

Especially when they were about somebody's life. 

"She'd like to see this, you know!" From beside him, Asbjørn Eide slung an arm over Alfinn's shoulder, knocked their heads together and breathed heavy, mead-scented air into his face before smacking him in the shoulder so hard he nearly toppled backward off his bench. "Good thing I socked that Torbjörn fellow in the jaw! Won't forget that in a long time after what he did to our girl!" 

"Ah, but _I_ broke his nose," said a voice on his other side. Quieter, much quieter, than her husband, and a little slurred by drink, but it sliced through the cacophony of the party below like a hot knife. "It was far less than he deserved for sending Sigrun out there with an inexperienced team and inshuff- _insufficient_ equipment, and then having the nerve to try and be jovial with us. For comfort. Now, that Siv woman. I think she agreed with me. She must have _some_ Viking in her, herself." 

Solveig Eide drained her cup and set it down on the table with perfect poise. She wasn't - couldn't - be any less drunk than anyone else; she'd matched the rest of them cup for re-filled cup. But Asbjørn had turned into a human megaphone with no boundaries the more he drank. Solveig had gone quiet, reflective, and fingered the long knife on her belt. "And this I may reserve for Trond if he ever shows his face here again."

Alfinn didn't have time to dwell on Solveig's fingers on her knife. Asbjørn smacked him on the back and he nearly flew across the table. "Drink another one for her now that she can't have it! Can't attend her own feast!" Asbjørn bellowed, and his eyes over the gap-toothed grin welled up with tears. "Sigrun!" 

The hall responded with a cheer, loud enough to rattle the walls. 

* * *

As Elsebeth Holst climbed the fire escape to her office on the third floor, she thanked the architects of the Bornholm branch of the Nordic Council for safety regulations. The main entrance of the building was choked with reporters demanding to be let in, as they'd done for days. The press had been summarily banned from all governmental institutions handling the case of the Silent World expedition, but _Bornholms Tidende_ , _Dagbladet_ , _Ekstrabladet_ , and then some were trying anyway, and her superiors let them: As long as they had the ban to report about, the absence of actual news was less of a concern. Elsebeth knew it had been the hope of the higher-ups that their journalistic stubbornness would eventually run dry, and they'd return to everyday reporting soon enough, or once the official report was released. 

And she was the one to write it. 

She couldn't shake the feeling that there was something in the Silent World that the authorities wanted to conceal, and heroism inspired by the mission was the last thing they looked for. It had felt that way from the beginning, ever since Mikkel had deadpanned about the damnably low budget getting them all killed, three months before they ever set out. 

And now? The ceremony for the supposedly-dead was meant to have been a memorial, but all three of Bornholm's main newspapers and all of its radio shows had dubbed it the Miracle of Kastrup as soon as news broke, and as the only Nordic Council operative in attendance of said miracle, they'd eat her alive with their questions if they got to her. 

She didn't think Maja would like that very much. She climbed through the window that she'd left ajar the night before, settled into her chair, rubbed the bruise on her upper arm where Mille had taken to boxing her for bringing the message of Mikkel's death, and began reviewing the case yet again. 

_Make it boring_ , the memo from her superiors said, among other instructions. Better luck this time, and the sooner she was done the sooner the crew would be released from what had been termed an "extended quarantine" but really was part of the press ban. She uncovered her typewriter and set to work where she had left off the night before.

_A thorough investigation of the team's vehicle concluded that it was compromised in the course of the troll attack. Heavy damage to the tank's electronics as well as the plating was sustained by a powerful troll clinging to the vehicle's underside; making it, ultimately, unusable to the team and forcing them to evacuate once conditions permitted it. In addition, the mechanics in charge of the repairs replaced a broken side mirror that was likely also damaged in the course of the mission and substituted by another model._

_On the battle site itself, the heavy rain following the night of the attack erased all footprints; the conclusion that the team members had been taken by trolls was sustained by the slight evidence of drag marks in direction of the city that had not been wholly washed away and were identified upon examination of the grounds. Burnt earth in a perimeter around the tank indicated the initiative of the team's Cleanser, Emil F. Västerström; while shells recovered on the site fit both his and Captain Sigrun S. Eide's caliber rifles. Blunt force trauma to the heads of several corpses can now be ascribed to Danish medic and second-in-command Mikkel H. Madsen. Additionally it was reported that Night Scout Lalli S. Hotakainen of Finland, and Reynir Þ. Árnason of Iceland both employed traditional cultural techniques to attempt to hold the trolls at bay._

Elsebeth snorted and cracked her fingers. That was a good euphemism; she was proud of herself. Not that many Danes believed in magic (she did not), but that didn't mean there wasn't a fascination with it and the people who claimed to wield it, like the owlish young man from Finland who had cried his way through the memorial, and she did not mean to make the report any more fascinating than it ought to be. She suspected that that line would not survive the censors, regardless. She was not even going to mention the nonsense claims that there had been ghosts. 

_We can now say that the evacuation proceeded successfully. The aforementioned drag marks were the result of Scout Hotakainen sustaining a broken leg in the course of the attack and being unable to walk, so that the team improvised a sled out of a piece of tarp pulled by Árnason to bring him to safety in an Odense church for the remainder of the night, protect the non-immune party members, and cover their retreat. Due to the Scout's incapacitation, the team was unable to proceed to the agreed-upon rendezvous location with quarantine ship V/S Þór, and instead opted, despite Captain Eide's initial reluctance, to re-trace their steps on foot across Sjælland and Fyn, which they concluded to be less dangerous than striking into uncharted territory, after their previous travels had stirred up most trolls into following them._

And then… Elsebeth shook her head biting back a laugh. "So I said, 'we'll go as far as we can go on the bridge and then we'll shout real loud. Someone's gotta hear us'." That had been Captain Sigrun's Eide's contingency plan if they ever made it back as far as Copenhagen and across the bridge. 

That they'd made it at all without their two noncombatants becoming infected, or the scout's leg needing amputation either hinted at a far more qualified crew than the woman's words let show, or an enormous act of providence, and Elsebeth didn't think she believed in that, either. What she knew was this: They'd mounted a plaque with the names of the crew on the inside of the tunnel gates by the names of the fallen of Kastrup. There'd been medals for the heroes. Then they'd left the tunnel for the erstwhile battlefield of Kastrup, where an Öresund crew had built a pyre. 

There'd been speeches, Torbjörn Västerström took a beating that no one particularly objected to, and Maja had nearly crushed her hand when it came to honouring Mikkel. The Generals Eide, as the highest-ranking parents of the crew, had had the honour of lighting the fire with long torches, but as they stood and watched it burn - a few keepsakes of the lost party that their relatives had brought going up in flames on it - like the sun coming over the defensive mounds at the edge of the battlefield in between the shattered tanks - the crew had come running, stumbling, shouting. 

Maybe there was a thing like providence after all, for them to show up right that day and moment. 

Elsebeth looked at the report in the typewriter before her, pulled it out and crumpled the sheet into a ball. She tossed, missed her paper basket by the door, and leaned back into her chair. 

A knock on the open window behind her made her whirl around. She had only moments to process the image of a grinning Mille Madsen waving at her from the fire escape, followed by an entire horde of press people, before all hell broke loose. 

Composing herself, Elsebeth Holst resolved that Mille's warning of poisoned cookies would soon be more than empty bragging. Then she smiled at the press - or hoped she did - and began answering their questions.


End file.
